A summary of a method for evaluating whether or not a report from an occupant is for a temporary need, in a building that has equipment that is operated in response to an improvement need report from an occupant regarding the surrounding environment, has been disclosed in, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication 2012-194847 (“the JP '847”).
For example, extreme movements in the indoor environment through a series of need reports by a specific individual that cause movement in one direction (such as movement in the direction of reducing the room temperature in air-conditioning equipment) in the equipment control are unavoidable due to the tendency for one occupant to have a negative impact on the environment for the other occupants of a building, such as an office, wherein multiple occupants share a space.
If the equipment control uniformly responds temporarily to a need report from an occupant, and then returns to the original control after a temporary response, then even if there are continuous need reports so as to move the equipment control in one direction, the negative impact on the environment will only be temporary. However, in such a temporary response, when there is an uncomfortable environment wherein the need to improve the room environment is strong, the uncomfortable environment will be improved only temporarily. In this case, even though the environment is improved temporarily through the equipment control operation in a temporary response to a need report from an occupant, eventually there will be a return to the uncomfortable environment, meaning that there is the need for the occupant to make reports continually over an extended period of time, which not only is burdensome and annoying to the occupant, but, in the worst case, causes a continuing environment with large mental and physical overhead.
The building facilities operating state evaluating device set forth in the JP '847 makes it possible to derive an evaluation index for evaluating correctly the operating state of the facilities in the building, making it possible to evaluate the operating state of the facilities correctly. However, with the building facilities operating state evaluating device disclosed in the JP '847, the evaluation is in relation to the energy aspects of the air-conditioning equipment (energy conservation), and thus even though it can prevent an increase in energy consumption, there is a problem in that it cannot respond adequately in regards to improving the indoor environment as felt by the occupants.
The present invention was created in order to solve the problem set forth above, and an aspect thereof is to provide a need identifying device, air-conditioning controlling system, need identifying method, and air-conditioning controlling method able to avoid extreme movements in the indoor environment caused by continual reports by a specific individual, along with reliably improving the indoor environment when the need to improve the indoor environment is great, while preventing unnecessary increases in energy consumption.